centre of our planetary system. Let me here premise, that in all these inquiries concerning the History of India, I shall confine my researches downwards to the Mohammedan conquests at the beginning of the eleventh century, but extend them upwards, as high as possible, to the earliest authentic records of the human species. India then, on its most enlarged scale, in which the ancients appear to have understood it, comprises an area of near forty degrees on each side, including a space almost as large as all Europe; being divided on the west from Persia by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the east by the Chinese part of the farther Peninsula, confined on the north by the wilds of Tartary, and extending to the south as far as the Isles of Java. This trapezium, therefore, comprehends the stupendous hills of Potyid or Tibet, the beautiful valley of Cashmír, and all the domains of the old Indoscythians, the countries of Népál and Butánt, Cámrùp or Asàm, together with Siam, Ava, Racan, and the bordering kingdoms, as far as the China of the Hindus, or Sín of the Arabian Geographers: not to mention the whole Western Peninsula, with the celebrated island of Sinhala, or Lion-like Men, at its southern extremity. By India, in short, I mean that whole extent of country in which the primitive religion and languages of the Hindus prevail at this day with more or less of their ancient purity, and in which the Nágarì letters are still used with more or less deviation from their original form. The Hindus themselves believe their own country, to which they give the vain epithets of Medhyama, or Central, and Punyabhúmi, or the Land of Vir tues, to have been the portion of Bharat, one of the nine brothers, whose father had the dominion of the whole earth; and they represent the mountains of Himálaya as lying to the north; and to the west, those of Vindhya, called also Vindian by the Greeks; beyond which the Sindhu runs in several branches to the sea, and meets it nearly opposite to the point of Dwáracà, the celebrated seat of their Shepherd God. In the south-east they place the great river Saravatya; by which they probably mean that of and Ava, called also Airávati in part of its course, giving perhaps its ancient name to the gulf of Sabara. This domain of Bharat they consider as the middle of the Jambudwípa, which the Tibetians also call the Land of Zambu; and the appellation is extremely remarkable, for Jambu is the Sanscrit name of a delicate fruit, called Jaman by the Musel-mans, and by us rose-apple; but the largest and richest sort is named Amrita, or Immortal; and the Mythologists of Tibet apply the same word to a celestial tree bearing ambrosial fruit, and adjoining to four vast rocks, from which as many sacred rivers derive their several streams. The inhabitants of this extensive tract are described by Mr. Lord with great exactness, and with a picturesque elegance peculiar to our ancient language: "A people (says he) presented themselves to mine eyes, clothed in linen garments somewhat low descending, of a gesture and garb, as I may say, maidenly and well nigh effeminate, of a countenance shy and somewhat estranged, yet smiling out a glozed and bashful familiarity." Mr. Orme, the Historian of India, who unites an exquisite taste for every fine art with an accurate knowledge C of Asiatic manners, observes, in his elegant preliminary Dissertation, that this "country has been inhabited from the earliest antiquity by a people who have no resemblance, either in their figure or manner, with any of the nations contiguous to them;" and that "although conquerors have established themselves at different times in different parts of India, yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character." The ancients, in fact, give a description of them, which our early travellers confirmed, and our own personal knowledge of them nearly verifies; as you will perceive from a passage in the Geographical Poem of Dionysius, which the Analyst of Ancient Mythology has translated with great spirit: "To the' east a lovely country wide extends, Their sources of wealth are still abundant, even after so many revolutions and conquests: in their manufactures of cotton they still surpass all the world; and their features have, most probably, remained unaltered since the time of Dionysius; nor can we reasonably doubt, how degenerate and ́abased soever the Hindus may now appear, that in some early age they were splendid in arts and arms, happy in government, wise in legislation, and eminent in various knowledge: but since their civil history, beyond the middle of the nineteenth century from the present time, is involved in a cloud of fables, we seem to possess only four general media of satisfying our curiosity concerning it; namely, first, their Languages and Letters; secondly, their Philosophy and Religion; thirdly, the actual remains of their old Sculpture and Architecture; and fourthly, the written memorials of their Sciences and Arts. I. It is much to be lamented that neither the Greeks, who attended Alexander into India, nor those who were long connected with it under the Bactrian princes, have left us any means of knowing with accuracy, what vernacular languages they found on their arrival in this empire. The Mohammedans, we know, heard the people of proper Hindustan, or India, on a limited scale, speaking a Bháshá, or living tongue, of a very singular construction, the purest dialect of which was current in the districts round Agrà, and chiefly on the poetical ground of Mathurà; and this is commonly called the idiom of Vraja. Five words in six, perhaps, of this language were derived from the Sanscrit, in which books of religion and science were composed, and which appears to have been formed by an exquisite grammatical arrangement, as the name itself implies, from some unpolished idiom; but the basis of the Hindustánì, particularly the inflexions and regimen of verbs, differed as widely from both those tongues, as Arabic differs from Persian, or German from Greek. Now the general effect of conquest is to leave the current language of the conquered people unchanged, or very little altered, in its groundwork, but to blend with it a considerable number of exotic names both for things and for actions; as it has happened in every country, that I can recollect, where the conquerors have not preserved their own tongue unmixed with that of the natives, like the Turks in Greece, and the Saxons in Britain; and this analogy might induce us to believe, that the pure Hindì, whether of Tartarian or Chaldean origin, was primeval in Upper India, into which the Sanscrit was introduced by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age; for we cannot doubt that the language of the Véda's was used in the great extent of country which has before been delineated, as long as the religion of Brahmá has prevailed in it. The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Cel |